


Empty Cradles

by quartzapple



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Depression, M/M, Paedophilia, Prostitution, Rape, Sibling Incest, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 03:34:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quartzapple/pseuds/quartzapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two-shot. The events directly before and after the Uchiha massacre.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

oO..Oo..oO..Oo

_I watched you die, I heard you cry_

_Every night in your sleep_

_I was so young, you should have known_

_Better than to lean on me_

oO..Oo..oO..Oo

"Nii-chan! Nii-chan! I want to go to swimming in the river with you!" A familiar voice squeaked from behind me, a small hand clinging to the back of my shirt. Even though he was eight, he still acted like a tiny child. Eight wasn't so young, and there were times when I wanted Sasuke to grow up. But now wasn't one of those times.

"I'm sorry, Sasuke," I replied, turning around to make my excuse. "I don't have time this afternoon, Father wants me to attend a meeting with the clan elders and-"

"But Nii-chan, you promised you'd go last week and you never did," His little mouth pouted, soft lower lip sticking out, a pretty shade of rosy pink. Big dark eyes stared out, an innocent soul lurking in the darkness. Delicate, pale hands tangled in the front of my shirt, pinning me in place. "You  _promised_ ,"

"If Father wants me to go, then I have no choice," I said. It was true; it was all a part of my duty. Not just to my clan, but to Konoha. I had my orders, and I had my deadline. This was the last meeting, the last chance to gather information before I had to do it. I was doing all I could to say emotionally detached, but Sasuke's little face was making my resolve crumble.

I wouldn't be able to kill my little brother, but equally I wouldn't be able to leave him innocent.

"It's just the one meeting. They can do without you," He pleaded, eyes growing impossibly wider and deeper, rising up onto his toes. I wanted to raise my hand and run it over that face, to touch the skin that looked so much like porcelain, but felt delicately baby soft and untarnished by harsh training. I wanted to touch it before I had to leave, even though it would hurt both of us more. "Please,"

Tomorrow, the first step of my plan would fall into place. I would wipe out each and every member of our clan, leaving poor, innocent little Sasuke in the wake of my destruction. I would run off and join Akatsuki, thus making myself the villain and Sasuke the tragic hero, harbouring enough hatred to redeem our family by killing me in the future.

He would hate me. By the time he was my age, just thirteen, he would realise that what I had done was monstrous. All my lingering touches, a fleeting kiss that I had made him promise never to tell our parents about, stares that went on for too long, sleeping in the same bed despite our ages; I knew I was sick and despicable. Sasuke was my one weakness and another filthy secret to add to the growing pile. He would hate me, and then he would kill me.

That was the plan, at least. I had had to beg for Sasuke to be spared. No one knew of my plan, not even the man who visited me in the dead of night and trained the eyes that I had killed to obtain, not the council that ordered the massacre, and especially not Sasuke.

If I was to destroy his life forever in less than twenty four hours, then I supposed I could indulge him one last time.

"Just for a little while, then," I acquiesced, reaching down to gently unlatch his fingers from my shirt, dropping them before I could let the hold linger. I had hidden my perversity from my family for years; they didn't need to find out about it now. Even if they suspected, it would be useless. They'd be dead soon.

"Yay! Thank you, Nii-chan! I love you!" Sasuke squealed, grinning widely. I wanted to smile back and watch as his grin grew impossibly wider, the way it did whenever I let myself smile for him. It made me feel halfway normal, like an ordinary older brother making his younger brother happy in normal ways. I never had enough time for him, and what time I did devote to him was mostly training, but I would never hear him complain. It was only when he decided we had to do something non-ninja-related that we'd do something halfway normal.

And even then my ridiculous lust had to mess it all up.

"Silly little brother," I bit the inside of my lip discreetly, repressing a smile at my line. I wanted to return the sentiment, but my love would be a different kind of love, the kind children don't understand, and Sasuke was definitely a child. He meant the platonic, sibling type love that all children are obliged to feel for their brother or sister, combined with a good dose of hero worship that I did little to dissuade. I meant something else.

The clan could wait. Father could wait. Konoha could wait. I wanted to spend time with my little brother. It was the least I could do, but he didn't see it that way.

I had had increasingly less time to spend with Sasuke since my promotion to ANBU captain, the missions I was assigned becomingly riskier and longer. By the tender age of thirteen, I had seen and caused more bloodshed than I should have in a lifetime, and I knew it showed in my demeanour. I had never been carefree like Sasuke, but I had never actively shut him out. No one saw it happening but me; I could feel myself distancing us. I didn't want my bloody taint to mar my precious little brother.

I was supposed to distance myself, anyway. The laws of adolescence demanded that I desire to leave my family behind and try to establish some independence because I was getting to the age where girls and impressing my friends was the centre of my interest. I didn't have many friends my age to impress, not that they needed any more demonstrations of my prowess. And I wasn't interested in girls.

I had heard the conversations between other males, all about who was in a relationship with whom and who was casually fucking whom. They gossiped like old women at times, but even the youngest of them were experienced sexually. I was younger than all of them, and I had zero experience with the opposite sex. I had no desire to be with a woman.

No, I only desired my own little brother.

It was undeniable as I watched his little form race away back towards the house, the cool breeze ruffling his hair and brushing across his cheeks the way I desperately wanted to. Fleeting or brotherly contact wasn't enough. I had let myself slip before, but I couldn't let myself slip again.

I followed him back to the house, the large, traditional building all in panels of light and dark, bathed in warm sunlight. We had grown up in that house. So had our father, and our grandfather, and generations before that. It was a base of memories.

A warm drink on the wooden porch around the back on a winter's day, looking at the snow. Sasuke snuggled into my side. I permitted it to happen, even though I knew he was pretending to be asleep. Before that, mealtimes with a bratty little Sasuke looking longingly at a piece of food on my plate, Mother telling him off for being greedy while he pouted and inched his little body closer and closer to mine. Even before that, holding him as an infant wrapped in a blanket, looking down at his wide, dark eyes and realising that my duty to this tiny little bundle of pale skin, dark eyes and quiet breathing outstripped everything else.

I was truly the most privileged person in the world. I got to watch Sasuke grow up. Eight years wasn't enough, but it would have to do.

Entering the house, I evaded Mother with little effort. I had deceived her for years; a day or two more wouldn't be difficult. Either way, I had no business with my mother. It was my father I wanted to speak to.

Silently, I approached the sliding door to his office, knocking gently.

"Enter," He called from within, and I slid back the door. Like much of the house, the office was all set in whites and creams and black, with the exception of a large Uchiha fan painted in a stylised mural across the back wall. A low table occupied the room, smaller tables holding vases with delicate flowers that Mother changed every three days. It was mostly for show; the room wasn't particularly comfortable, deliberately so. It was a great shame to be called to Father's office, though Sasuke somehow managed to surpass the number of times I was called to the office in my entire life by the time he was four. The atmosphere never wore off, though. I felt absurdly uncomfortable setting foot through the door.

What did it matter? Father would be dead soon, and then Sasuke could never be called to the office again, and I'd never have to wipe the tears he tried so hard to hide from his cheeks after being told once again that he wasn't excelling as much as he should have been.

"I'm unable to attend the meeting today," I said softly.

"This is unlike you, Itachi," He replied, not looking up from where he sat at his desk. "You know better than this. These meetings are not optional, and I fully expect to see you there. Have I made myself clear?"

"Yes, Father," I spoke, masking my voice to be the perfect little doll. Let him believe what he would.

oO..Oo..oO..Oo

The water was cool around my calves. I hadn't allowed Sasuke to venture into any water deeper than my knees, but he had somehow managed to completely drench himself anyway, and had taken off most of his clothes. Though I had hoped paddling would be enough, I should have known it wouldn't be.

"You're not playing right, Nii-chan!" Sasuke wailed. One of his wet hands bunched in the fabric of my trousers, leaving a damp patch. "If you don't do it right, I'm going to splash you!"

"Were we playing tag?" I asked, watching as his little face crumpled with disappointment. I hadn't been paying attention. Even though I had promised to come and play, my mind was still elsewhere.

He moved quickly; not quickly enough that I couldn't have evaded if I had tried, but quickly enough to prove he wasn't as bad as Father made him out to be. Pale hands brushed the water, sweeping a spray of cold droplets through the air to connect with my body. I feigned horror for a second, staring down at the dark marks blossoming across my chest and legs, and then smirked. Sasuke giggled as I kicked the water, aiming too far to the right and missing him completely, before giving chase.

Before I knew it, my clothes were soaked through, tendrils of my hair sticking to my face. Somehow we had gotten into water far deeper than I had intended, and I couldn't help but worry a little. The current was stronger here, and Sasuke was being forced to jump awkwardly to run.

My fingers closed around his wrist, and I pulled him back into my chest before he could get any further downstream. If I remembered correctly, this was where the bed of the river dropped off, becoming closer to a proper, fast-moving river rather than the stream we had been playing in.

"Aw, you caught me," He mumbled. He looked up, roughly pushing a damp patch of hair out of one eye. "Will you chase me now?"

I couldn't stop myself. Those eyes were too dark and that skin was too white, and the warmth of his little body held against mine in the cold water was too much. My lips connected with his forehead before I knew what I was doing.

There was a chance that we would die tomorrow. I might have horribly underestimated the strength of the Uchiha clan, and they might take me out before I could do any real damage. Or Sasuke might be caught up in the violence, his throat slit before I could stop myself.

I needed to regain complete control over myself again.

But I really didn't want to.

My arms tightened, one hand slipping down to hold onto his hip to raise him up a little. His shirt was long gone; nothing protected him from the cold water but his drenched underwear, and even that was slipping down his hips, gently assisted by my fingers. I buried my nose in his hair, inhaling the smell of river and shampoo and Sasuke.

"N-nii-chan? What are you doing?" He asked. His voice didn't waver. If he knew what I was doing, his voice would have wavered. He couldn't pretend like I could. I really was destroying his innocence.

I couldn't deny the arousal I felt swelling within my soaked trousers. Wrong, wrong, wrong, but I couldn't seem to stop. I desperately wanted to touch more of his skin, to brush it all with my fingertips and tongue and rub my body against it so hard we'd melt into one being. My other hand glided across his stomach, tickling teasingly, and drawing that beautiful, childish giggle from his lips. I wanted to kiss them again, but I didn't know how to explain to him that we shouldn't kiss like that afterwards. He wouldn't protest. I could probably take him right there, in the middle of the river, and he wouldn't protest.

No, he was eight. I couldn't do that to a child.

Instead, I pressed my lips to the side of his neck. He squirmed a little, moving within my grasp. I nearly gasped when the tips of my fingers brushed against the tiny, childlike member concealed by his thin underwear. I shouldn't touch. There was no way I could possibly justify touching, other than giving him an impromptu hands-on sex education lesson, which was definitely not the ideal way to spend the remaining hours I had as a Konoha ninja.

Against all logic, I touched him again. We had hours. Just hours, and then I would be gone forever. This Itachi, the one currently molesting his little brother under the veil of childish play, would effectively kill himself in Sasuke's eyes, replaced with the heartless monster who murdered countless innocents.

"Nii-chan, Mama said no one is supposed to touch  _there_ ," Sasuke whispered. He arched back into me, enough for my desperate mind to pretend that it was in pleasure, rather than in discomfort. Fortunately, he didn't push backwards hard enough or at the right angle to feel my growing erection through my clothes. I would have had a horrendous time explaining that.

The hand on his stomach slid upwards, tracing across the flat, undeveloped planes of his chest, brushing over nipples erect with cold, memorising every line and every detail. The change in texture where his ribcage met his abdomen. The smooth line of a tiny scar. I would remember it all.

I was so distracted by my brother's body that I didn't notice our father approaching. Or maybe I did. I probably wouldn't have stopped there unless I was interrupted.

"Sasuke. Go home," Both of our heads jerked up, looking towards the sound of his stern voice. He stood stock still, eyes taking in the picture before him, a look of horror plainly plastered across his face.

"But Father, I-" Sasuke began. I thanked the gods he was too innocent to know what I had done, to know why our father was looking at us like that. Looking at  _me_  like that. Sasuke had done nothing wrong.

"This is non-negotiable, Sasuke," He said stiffly.

"Fine," Sasuke pouted, looking up at me again. "Play with me later, Nii-chan?"

"Of course," I smiled. I gave him one last smile, though I knew when he thought back to this moment in years to come the smile would make all my actions that much more horrible. He returned the smile with a happy grin; he'd hate that, too. Victims weren't supposed to smile at their abusers.

" _Now_ , Sasuke," Father commanded. I let Sasuke slip from my arms and watched as he loped upstream to collect the rest of his clothes, disappearing from view around a tree.

There was a moment of quiet that stretched on longer than any moment realistically should have. In fact, it was probably closer to minutes than to a moment. The water was cold, but my father's eyes were colder. I probably should have gotten out of the water, but the look in his eyes told me that if I tried to move, to set one foot in the same direction as Sasuke, I would receive a fireball to the face.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" His voice was hot with anger, eyes normally so calm incensed with fury. "What the  _fuck_  was that I just saw?"

"Sasuke asked me to play with him," I replied innocently, though I was anything but. I could have laughed at myself.

"But not  _play_  with him! I'm sure you understand the difference between right and wrong, especially in regards to – to  _sex_. He's your brother, for god's sake! You can't do that to your brother!" He was struggling to keep his voice under control. Sasuke was still close enough to hear.

"He didn't understand. He'll forget soon enough," I said calmly, walking forward. If he struck out at me, I could easily dodge, but I'd let him hit me anyway. I'd rather he vent his anger on me now than think about the implications for Sasuke.

Either way, he couldn't do anything about it. I'd already committed the crime, in his eyes.

"That doesn't change what you did, Itachi. I can't allow this to slide. You skip a very important meeting so you can violate your own little brother…" His voice tailed off as he reached forward and seized my wrist, like I was a naughty child being dragged home by their mother. It was the first time he had ever done something like that. "You know what? You're coming back with me, and we'll talk about this in my office. Your mother doesn't have to know, it would kill her. And then we can talk about what's going to happen next. I think a nice, long mission to some far-away country would do  _perfectly_ ,"

oO..Oo..oO..Oo


	2. Chapter 2

oO..Oo..oO..Oo

_Walk away_

_Barely breathing_

_As I'm lying on the floor_

_Take my heart_

_As you're leaving_

_I don't need it anymore_

oO..Oo..oO..Oo

I had done it.

There wasn't really any way to describe the feeling, knowing that your life had just been cut short. There wasn't really any way to describe the feeling of your blade slicing through the warm flesh of your own mother and father, either. Or to describe the feeling as you looked aside, not caring to watch as the life drained from another pair of dark eyes, not caring whether they were five or fifty years old. They were all the same.

No, they weren't all the same. Each and every one of them had been human beings. And I had killed them.

But I couldn't think like that. If I thought too hard about what I had just done, the walls I had been building for years would collapse. If I thought like that, then I'd have to admit that every target of every mission was a human being, and I'd have committed countless murder. That's what killing is, isn't it?

Murder. Such a dirty, dark word. I didn't like it. Strangely, hysterical giggles pushed to rise from my throat. I crushed them down again before my façade broke.

I wanted to laugh, to scream, to cry, to fall on the ground and scream at the sky and ask why I had to do it, and if there was any point in carrying on anymore. But there was nothing to laugh about, and nothing to scream over. There had been enough screaming. A lot of tears. Some crying. And many, many bodies falling to the ground. There had even been one or two laughs of contrary terror and disbelief that it was  _me_.

Just more bodies to add to the countless pile I had been creating since I was a child. More death and more blood to paint my skin red with. My eyes still glowed with the power I had used so callously to inflict more pain than I ever should have. Showing him, the one person in the world I loved, the death of Mother and Father over and over again for days on end. Making him watch as my blade cut through their bodies, as blood pooled around their fallen corpses, mingling with the blood that already spattered my uniform.

I couldn't have done worse if I had ripped off his clothes and raped him there, over the bodies of our parents. In a sense, I already had.

Nii-chan was gone, dead, and I was all that was left. I couldn't fool myself that somehow, somewhere, maybe in the darkest corner of Sasuke's scarred mind that the beloved older brother figure still existed, just waiting under a shell of darkness to come back with open arms. It was about as likely as our parents rising from the grave.

If they were ever truly buried. I had ensured they would stay in Sasuke's mind forever, lying dead on the floor. The wood would be stained.

Committing gross murder was nothing compared to what I had done to Sasuke. And I couldn't ever take it back or atone. Only in death could I ever hope to be redeemed, and Sasuke had to be the one to kill me.

That thought alone was enough to prevent me from driving my sword into my heart or my throat. I had inflicted enough damage on Sasuke, and the best way to heal would be to exorcise the demon from his past, and I would happily die at his hands. I had no doubt that I would.

It would be revenge for everything that I had done. Not just the murder of our family - his family, I no longer had the right to claim I had a privilege like a _family_  anymore – but for everything. The lies, the deceit, the treachery, and the touching. It would be the only way he could feel clean.

The blood was cold on my face, drying stickily as blatant evidence of what I had done, yet no one stopped me as I walked deathly slowly through the forest.

It was good that I was leaving. If I didn't leave, then Sasuke would be stuck with me forever. He deserved better than me. Without our parents around, I would somehow have managed to convince him that it was normal for brothers to touch like lovers, and that it was perfectly alright for me to take every last fragment of his shattered innocence. I wouldn't have been able to leave him alone until my desires had been filled, until he was wrapped around me and I was deep inside him and he was screaming for me to stop because it hurt and-

No. I would have made him enjoy it, and that would be worse.

So, of course, there was no excuse for my pause. My feet stopped and I lost my balance, leaning sideways until my shoulder connected with the harsh trunk of a tree. The bark cut my skin, but I barely felt it.

I wasn't aware of how long I stood there, leaning against that tree. I could have stayed there for seconds, hours or years. It was irrelevant. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to stop everything. Stop breathing, stop my heart beating, stop my blood flowing. Stop my thoughts flowing through my head.

It would have been so easy to turn around and walk back into Konoha, to find my little brother curled up on the floor, to lift him into my arms and carry him to his bedroom and tuck him in for the last time, to plant one last, horrible kiss on his little lips. But I didn't.

It was against that tree that I found I was not alone.

"So you did it? Good boy," The familiar voice said. I didn't correct him; I was not a 'good boy', but no one corrects Madara. "We're leaving. Konoha's dogs will be on our trail before long, and I fully intend to claim what is mine before the night is through,"

We ran. I pushed myself to be quick enough, though my legs felt like lead and falling down to die or wait for my new enemy to find me seemed much more appealing. I was quick enough. We ran for hours until I lost all sense of direction. But the location wasn't important. I barely noticed when we stopped, pushed against a tree and foreign lips pressed to mine.

It didn't register that it was my first kiss from someone who wasn't my own brother.

The lips were as forceful and demanding as the hands that began to rip and tug at my clothing, stripping it bit by bit from my body until I was naked. I didn't protest, or resist. I didn't have the right to resist, considering I was no better myself. I didn't resist when a hand gripped my jaw to pull my mouth open so his tongue could slip inside, refusing to shut my eyes. I wanted to it all, to experience exactly what I would have done so easily if I had stayed.

It had been long overdue. My body, for training. A fair enough trade, though Madara had made sure to savour every second and wait until now, waiting to claim a prize I had been dangling temptingly before his eyes for too long. It was yet more evidence that I was damaged beyond repair.

Still, no one else would ever want to touch me.

A hand tugged at my pony tail, jerking my head back to gain better access to my mouth. I exhaled sharply at the pain, which he took to be some kind of perverse encouragement, and the kiss became painfully intrusive. My lips felt bruised at the force of contact, from the teeth that would bite down on them at every possible opportunity, just a small amount of pressure away from splitting.

The kiss ended abruptly, and I was turned around to be crushed against the tree. Hard bark pressed patterns into my flesh, flaying a little skin from my cheek. I didn't care. It might have removed some of the blood, which I was grateful for. If I had to cut my own skin off to remove those stains, I'd do it with a blunt kunai.

Of course, that was utterly ridiculous. I could never remove  _those_  stains.

I hissed when two dry fingers were roughly shoved inside me. I pressed my cheek harder against the tree, trying to cause myself more pain to distract me from the burning discomfort at the intrusion. I couldn't care less if it scarred. It was better than focusing on the sensation of the digits sharply moving back and forth, scissoring apart in a sorry attempt to stretch me.

My discomfort wasn't taken into account at all. The fingers were withdrawn and wiped off on my side, staining my body in yet another place but in a different way. I couldn't complain about this stain, though. It was completely self-inflicted.

I deserved this. I deserved so much more, for what I had done. I deserved a thousand times more punishment, and I had a feeling this man would attempt to give it all to me. I deserved it for being a murderer and a child molester and for committing matricide and patricide and for wanting to do this to my own little brother and for not stopping the massacre when I could have, somehow. I should have done something, I should have stopped myself, I should have-

A short scream was forced from my lips when he pushed his way inside. My young body wasn't equipped to deal with the intrusion, and he certainly hadn't prepared me anywhere near enough to make it anything less than very painful. I could feel myself tearing, stretching, breaking at the penetration. My whole body shook, forgetting every second of training it had undergone to deal with pain like this. I was equipped for months of torture, for grievous injury, for death, but I wasn't equipped for  _this_.

"Finally, I get a response," Hot breath chuckled in my ear. "I'm so grateful that you saved your virginity for me, Ita-kun. You don't know what it does to me-" He pulled back, withdrawing what felt like miles of hot, hard flesh from my abused entrance. "-to know that I'm the one who gets to strip away that last-" It slammed back in, my fingers scrabbling at the bark for purchase. "-piece-" A nail tore painfully, but it was nothing compared to the burn of pain inside. "-of innocence,"

He kept on thrusting, pushing himself in and out of my body over and over again for what seemed like an eternity. With every thrust, I wanted to let tears that were collecting in my eyes fall, to let the outside world know how much I wanted to stop, but I couldn't. I didn't deserve any better. Everything I had done, everything I was going to do – this was punishment. I could take it like a man, or like a cheap prostitute with legs spread for the next round, or like a child, crying against a tree.

I endured it because I deserved it. It was better that I played Madara's whore than Sasuke played mine, and I wouldn't have been able to stop myself if I had stayed. The knowledge that I was here, being fucked against a tree, was a thousand times better than deceiving my little brother with warped notions of  _love_.

Teeth bit into my neck, mouth relentlessly sucking to leave a mark that would leave me displayed to all the world as  _used_. I didn't care. He could tattoo it onto my forehead and I wouldn't care.

He shuddered twice, pace becoming erratic and impossibly harsher, before groaning almost inaudibly and emptying his seed into me. Marking me again, only on the inside this time. A mark I'd never be able to wash out.

I didn't care, as long as I was gone.

That night, he took me more times than I could remember.

No, that's a lie. He took me four more times, each time filling me with more and more of his seed, reminding me with each shuddering burst that I belonged to him, and I could never escape. I couldn't escape what I had done, and he was the consequence. I could be a puppet and a whore and my death wouldn't mean anything. It would only mean that I was too weak. Being unable to resist, growing to enjoy it, it was all a weakness.

But at least in death, I couldn't hurt Sasuke again.

oO..Oo..oO..Oo

_She is everywhere I go_

_Everyone I see_

_But these clouds won't leave_

oO..Oo..oO..Oo


End file.
